Honey, you're mine, and you're special!

Max Lucado, an American author and teacher, beautifully narrates the story of the small wooden people called the Wemmicks.

The woodworker, Eli, made them. Each Wemmick had a box of golden star stickers and grey dot stickers. They went around the village, sticking stars or dots on one another.

The pretty ones got stars. Wemmicks with rough wood or chipped paint got dots. The talented ones got stars, too. Punchinello had a lot of dots.

He tried to jump high like others, but he always fell. So, the Wemmicks gave him dots.

When Punchinello went outside, he hung around other Wemmicks who had lots of dots. He felt better around them. One day, he met a different kind of Wemmick named Lucia.

She'd no dots or stars. The Wemmicks admired Lucia for having no dots, so they would give her a star. But it would fall off. Others gave her a dot for having no stars. But it wouldn't stay either.

That's the way I want to be, thought Punchinello. So he asked Lucia how she did it. "It's easy," she replied. "Every day I go visit Eli the woodcarver.

Punchinello walked up the narrow path and stepped into Eli's shop. Then he heard his name. "Punchinello? He looked up. "You know my name?"

"Of course. I made you." Eli picked him up and set him on the bench. "Looks like you've been given some bad marks," said the maker.

"I didn't mean to, Eli. I really tried hard." "Punchinello, I don't care what the other Wemmicks think." "You don't?" "No. You shouldn't either.

What they think doesn't matter. All that matters is what I think. And I think you are pretty special." Punchinello laughed. "Me, special? Why? I'm not very talented, and my paint is peeling. Why do I matter to you?"

Eli spoke very slowly. "Because you're mine. That's why you matter to me." Punchinello said, "I came because I met Lucia." "Why don't the stickers stay on her?"

The maker spoke softly. "Because she'd decided that what I think is more important than what others think. The stickers only stick if you let them.

"What?" "The stickers only stick if they matter to you. The more you trust my love, the less you care about their stickers."

Lessons:

People don't determine our self-worth. We're special because God made us special. It's hard to relate to someone who believes their self-worth is equivalent to the number of possessions they have accumulated.

Shake economically, they leave you. Human beings made money, but unfortunately, when we'd finished assigning values to these papers, they immediately started assigning values to us.

Stick to your love and trust: Do you care about what others say about your spouse? I don't; for me, my wife Esther is so special! She's mine.

As I finish, the stickers only stick if I let them.